We rarely take the time for proper reflection.
You might think of yourself as an exception. While there is a chance that you might be, I really doubt it. If you are truly convinced you do, it may be time to hold up the mirror again.
I’m not saying that we aren’t capable of self-reflection, but rather that we reserve it for specific events and times. We will often take the time to reflect before the new year, we might pause for self-reflection at the funeral of a loved one, or the morning before we say our vows at the altar.
Other times we mistake nostalgia for reflection. These concepts look the same on the surface. We pine for items that remind us of a past life before the rosy innocence of childhood was replaced with the gray clockwork of adult life. Even the dwindling few that spend time regularly keeping a diary or journal are often found reminiscing rather than reflecting.
True self-reflection is when we analyze the ideas that we held in the past, and take the time to weigh the circumstances and logic that led to our prior perspective. However, we cannot stop there. After understanding the beliefs of our past selves, we must then consider if our subsequent experiences fit within our prior belief system. If we find them contradictory, then we need to re-evaluate the beliefs that we held. It’s a 3 step-process answering the following questions.
- What beliefs did I hold at time x and why did I believe them?
- What relevant events have happened since then? Do they conform with my beliefs?
- If they clash with my prior beliefs, how should my belief system change?
The process I described is not air-tight, and even the simplest examples can get complicated quickly. For example, you might have held the following belief 5 years ago: “cars are safer than motorcycles.” Since then, you have 3 friends get into car accidents but only one friend get into a motorcycle accident. Should that invalidate your initial beliefs? On its own, clearly not! If you personally know 50 car drivers and 1 motorcyclist, it only reinforces your original belief. However, does that experience beyond all doubt, “prove” that cars are safer? It doesn’t do that either! Maybe your one motorcyclist is typically more reckless, or just unlucky.
Proper self-reflection requires understanding of statistics and the scientific method. We must be careful with broad statements, absolutes, overfitting, and overgeneralization. When possible, we should try to use statistical data to supplement our anecdotal experience. We must use Bayesian updates to our models of the world when possible. Additionally, we must keep records of our original beliefs in the first place! You forget how many times you are wrong if you never write anything down. We must be the opposite of politicians and commit to our beliefs. Furthermore we need to change them when confronted with contradicting evidence. The hardest beliefs of all to evaluate are those that we cannot prove or disprove with simple statistics: beliefs of morality, ethics, and religion.
Proper self-reflection is one of the hardest things for human beings to do, especially if it results in a change in your core beliefs. Do you still think you are the exception?
I, for one, am not. Those that know me well, know that my stubbornness can often match that of the oldest, meanest mule, and that I frequently will defend an idea well beyond the vestiges of reason. Too often, I delight in playing devil’s advocate for its own sake and get lost in its mires.
The above was all a preamble to a recent moment I had for some self-reflection. It happened when I was vacationing in Fuerteventura. I received a message that morning from my friend Fillip asking me about a prior blog post I had written 5 years ago, God Remains Silent. He asked me if I had changed my perspective on God.
I responded truthfully, that I have since strayed further and further from Judaism since I had written that post. My trip to Israel was the zenith of my religious observance. It invoked a sense of belonging and a purpose in me that has dimmed in the years since. I did not witness any miracles in the Negev on that day, and I have not witnessed anything resembling a miracle since. Then, a bit later that day…
Thao and I rented a car and drove to a remote corner of the island to find a beautiful black-sand beach. Few people were in the water past their ankles, for the beach was under assault by unending 4-5 meter high waves. However, the ocean was calling my name. I sat on a nearby rock to put on my neoprene boots, thinking that I was a safe enough distance away from the pummeling of the waves. Then Poseidon himself lunged forward to wallop me on the back of the head and drench me head to toe. Water streamed out of my sinuses leaving furious, burning tracks in their wake. As I went to scrub the salt from my eyes, I realized the sea may have yanked my glasses right off my face.
I went back further inland to Thao in our safe spot, far beyond the reach of those vicious waves, and maintained a distant hope that I had left them with her. No dice. This was quite a pickle: the car rental was in my name and I couldn’t drive without glasses. We were only in the first half of our vacation, and my spare pair were foolishly left behind in Dublin. Desperation was starting to set in.
I went back to the scene of the crime where the ocean had robbed me blind and searched around there. Finding nothing, and remembering my earlier conversation with Fillip, I beseeched God for help in recovering my glasses. He remained silent, as he had for 26 years of my life. After 5 more minutes of searching (more like 1 more minute of searching and 4 minutes standing there feeling sorry for myself), I resigned myself to my fate and went back up the beach.
It had been over a decade since the last time I ever lost my glasses, and they are my most relied upon physical possession. I quickly cycled through the phases of grief and settled in at acceptance.
I returned to the beautiful present moment before me and spent the next hour walking along the beach, while staying just out of reach of the breaking sea. We were enjoying the views, and I was starting to think that the blurriness surrounding me had a certain beauty to it after all. Like I was ensconced in a Monet exhibition. At that moment of bliss, a wave crashes forward and deposits something a foot away from our feet. Even nearsighted, I could see clearly that they were my glasses!
Stupendously, all they had to show for their ocean adventure was a smattering of micro-scratches on the frame and some on the lens, but they were otherwise unscathed. I could see again!
Now comes the time for self-reflection, to see how that day fits with my beliefs about God and Judaism. The first thing I did when I got back online was to try and come up with some way of quantifying just how unlikely my experience was. I looked up on Reddit how often people had found prescription glasses (that don’t float) after losing them to a wave, and couldn’t find a single success story. If I had unlimited time I would try to simulate the movement of the glasses on the sea floor and see how often it would show up at my feet, but I am pretty certain that it will still be a statistically anomalous event. There was also the surrounding context; it was the exact same day that my friend dredged up a post I made from 5 years ago about miracles and asked me about it. It was the same day I truly asked my God for personal help.
It also got me wondering, what if there are other unlikely instances like this happening all the time, but I am too preoccupied with life to witness and understand them? In the early portions of the Torah, God produces the biggest miracles starting with the greatest miracle of Creation. Over time the miracles get relatively smaller: the splitting of the sea and words heard on Mount Sinai. We eventually get to the book of Esther where we only barely see a touch of God, and no inexplicable miracles enter the tale. The miracles get more and more subtle.
Why have the miracles gotten more subtle over time? There are many scholarly answers that are rooted in a more biblical context. My favorite answer is that the explicit use of Godly miracles takes away human agency and thereby takes away our capacity for free will. In the beginning, this might have been necessary since we needed to be created, given a path, and told what was right vs wrong. However, over time, fewer and fewer of these large course corrections are necessary, as we have a history of oral and written faith to fall back on.
Of course, I could be wrong about this being a signal of anything, let alone a miracle. Sometimes, low probability events happen. Chances are decent (roughly 1/e) that if you experience a million things in your life, you will experience that one low-probability one-in-a-million outcome. It’s possible you’ll even be too preoccupied to realize it.
I do not want to be one of those people who follows his faith blindly, casting aside morals and principles I have accumulated through experience. Neither do I want to be a person who would sooner believe that they went insane, than to admit that a miracle may have taken place. Thus, even though this event in my life has opened me to putting more stock in faith, it is a baby step.
I do feel like my beliefs have changed in a measurable way since that day in Fuerteventura. I have not transformed into a Hassidic Jew overnight, but I have been thinking about God more recently and his place in the world and in my life. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more “miracles” and will try to spend more time reflecting on a variety of topics. Hopefully some more of them will make it into the Prupescoop!